they shall have stars at elbow and foot
by cleromancy
Summary: After the second Keyblade War, the process of healing begins.


well, this was supposed to be a short PWP prompt, but instead it turned into. something else. this kind of came from A Place. anyway, enjoy your sad adults.

* * *

 _Though they go mad they shall be sane,_  
 _Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;_  
 _Though lovers be lost love shall not;_  
 _And death shall have no dominion._  
\- Dylan Thomas, "And death shall have no dominion"

* * *

There are nights sometimes when Terra seems afraid to touch her. His hands tremble towards her, but his arms draw them back, as though they are not to be trusted. And Aqua is left to curl into herself and wonder why she had started this, begun sneaking into his bed when the nights brought back too many memories of too many nights spent in a lightless realm, when she just wanted to hold and be held.

For the first few weeks after the world's rebirth, things seems as though they could heal. Not be the same - Aqua had no illusions about that - but heal. Terra seemed radiant then, amazed that he was alive, despite losing the ability to wield the Keyblade. But as time passed, a shadow seemed to fall over him once more - moments of pain flickering into his eyes, as if struck by a poisonous thought; periods of withdrawal and isolation; a fear that somehow, things might go wrong again. Like he might be in a dream of light about to burst and plunge him back into the dark again, a dark from which he could not escape.

It didn't seem to matter that Master Eraqus repeatedly emphasized that the loss of the use of his legs was a small price to pay for his life, that sheltering in Terra's heart was what allowed him to ultimately escape oblivion. It didn't seem to matter that Ventus - growing taller by the hour, as if to cram ten years' delayed growth into half a year - came to him every day for a sparring partner or a shoulder to lean on, or just to see that he was still there. It didn't seem to matter that Aqua - well - she didn't know what she could say to convince him that his present, growing silence hurt her more than any past mistakes.

But - Aqua is beginning to grow angry, past the hurt, and one day, she has had enough.

"Where's Terra?" she growls upon seeing Ventus stretching in the courtyard before his morning routine.

A pause, a sigh - "I don't know," he says. Aqua can hear the quiet tone of _I-wish-I-did_ in his voice, which only whets her mood. "Maybe he's - whoa." Upon looking up from his leg stretch, he sees her face, and blanches. She must look like how she feels. "Is… everything alright?"

"It's _about_ to be," she mutters, which doesn't make much sense as a threat, but it comes out that way.

Aqua finds Terra in the third place she looks: a short-height waterfall they used to train under, years ago. She approaches on foot, wary that her glider would alert him too soon. He's directly beneath the falls, in the spray, but instead of the calm, serene posture she's used to seeing him meditate in, he appears to be just be sitting and getting wet.  
"Terra!" she calls out, and she sees a shift in the falls' spray: his head snapping up.

He stands up and walks out of the water, shielding his eyes against the noon sun, his hair plastered down around his neck and face. He hadn't even taken his shirt off; it clings to him in wet folds. His eyes widen when he takes her in: she has stripped her sleeves and armor, her shoes, and her side-skirts, dressed only in the shorts and binding top that she always wears in combat. She is also carrying two _bo_ staves, old relics of their early training. Terra's is a full foot longer than hers, to accommodate his height; she throws one at him without warning. He fumbles it slightly, trapping it against his chest before getting his hands on it.

"What?" he asks, squinting at her.

"Come on," she says, jutting her chin at him and spinning her staff in a clean, smooth movement. "It's been ages since we sparred like this. Let's go."

Terra looks at her; looks at the staff in her hands; looks at the staff in his hands; looks at her again, this time with a look treading the line between suspicion and disbelief. "Now? Here?"

In answer, she spins the staff in her hands, shifting her grip down to one end, and flicks it outward with a sudden lunge, its full reach just long enough to _clack_ against the closer end of Terra's staff (he flinches violently) before she pulls it in again to return to a rest stance. "Sure," she says.

Terra frowns, but he takes a step back, twirls his own staff a few times to remember its weight and feel again. The two of them stand in a shallow pool, beneath the falls, both of them barefoot. The rocks beneath are smooth, but unevenly distributed, and rise and fall in irregular patterns. "What's this about?" he asks.

"You shouldn't let yourself get rusty," Aqua says, and before he can answer, she dives in with a flurry of twisting lunges. Terra is only thrown a step off-balance, but it's enough that he can only answer with a series of basic blocks, and no counter-attacks. She backs off a step, and it's the moment in the _kata_ when he should be striking, but he doesn't move in. He won't meet her eyes.

Aqua twirls her staff in a few patterns. "You know," she says, "Ven's noticed you haven't been around much during the day."

Terra doesn't say anything but a noncommittal grunt, finally taking the initiative to respond to her defensive stance with a few tepid attacks of his own. Maybe to get her to stop talking. She twists her staff around one lunge to tap his side; he slaps it down a second too late. "I've noticed too," she adds.

"Sorry," he mumbles, shifting back towards a defensive stance -

And that's when Aqua launches a series of frenzied strikes, none aiming to actually hit him, but to force him to defend himself, which he does only half by instinct, her staff clacking against his repeatedly, almost without pause. With a sudden lunge, downsweep, and upwards strike, Aqua knocks the staff clean out of his hands - it sails into the air and comes down against a nearby rock, wobbling in the air as it springs back once, before dropping into the pool. For a moment, the end of her staff is against his throat.

And he just shuts his eyes.

Aqua pulls her staff back and throws it off into the grass, past the pool's edges. "You aren't taking this seriously, are you? Taking _me_ seriously?" she demands. She spreads her hands - "You haven't talked to me in four days, not even at night! I thought maybe I'd try speaking in a language you _understand_ \- " a frustrated gesture at their staves, at their surroundings - "but it's like you don't even care! Do you care, Terra?"

It's only after a few seconds - as if waiting to check that she really would wait for an answer, Terra opens his eyes. "You're right. I'm sorry," he says again, as if by rote -

Aqua's hands fly to her face, dig the heels of her hands into her eyes - "Terra, I don't want you to be sorry, I want you to be _here_!"

A long silence. "Wh… what?" he asks.

"I know you feel bad about how everything turned out - " Aqua doesn't dare take her hands away from her eyes. She can feel the angry, hot tears welling up in them. Some Keyblade Master she is, barely in control of her own emotions. "You hardly say anything to me other than 'I'm sorry,' anymore. Terra, I don't want it to be like this, I don't want to make you feel like you have anything else to be sorry for. I'm afraid of what it is that keeps making you push us away." She can feel that a tear has leaked past the guard of her hands, that her voice is wavering. "I - I know maybe, maybe it wasn't right, maybe I shouldn't keep - asking you to comfort me, if you don't have enough to give - I just - "

"Oh, _Aqua_ ," she hears him say, and she clenches her teeth against a sob because it's the first time he's said her name in ages.

"I - I lost you once, Terra. I don't - I don't want to lose you twice."

She feels a sudden closeness, warmth - without her realizing, Terra has approached her and now gently wraps his arms around her. She buries her face in his chest, grips his shoulders.

"Aqua," he says. "I'm s-" He stops himself. "...Thank you," he says, instead. "For… wanting me around."

"Terra, I walked twelve years in the realm of darkness to find you and Ven," she says, muffled slightly by his chest. "Of course I want you around. I love you. You're important to me."

"I know," he says. Pauses. "...I forget, sometimes," he admits.

"Just let me remind you, okay?" Aqua whispers. "And Ven, too. And Master Eraqus. We all want you to be here with us."

"Okay," Terra says, and he lets her go. Aqua wipes at her tears again, and to her surprise, she sees that his eyes are a little wet, too. "I promise I'll be around more. I promise I'll...reach out to you," he says.

Aqua turns to go pick up her staff, but to her surprise, she feels Terra's hand close around hers. "Wait." She turns back. "You were right. I am getting rusty. One more bout before we go back?" And he smiles for her. It doesn't even seem forced. For a moment, it's like when they were young, when the world was whole and they would spend days beneath the sun and nights beneath the stars.

"You're on," Aqua says, scrambling lightly out of the water to go grab her staff. And one more bout turned into several, and Ventus found them after one or two hours and joined in, and the three of them wind up supporting each other back to the courtyard in time for the stars to begin peeking out from the veil of twilight. The world can't go back to how it used to be. But it can heal. And so can they.


End file.
